He shrugged, returning to his normal disinterested affectations. “Yeah, well, something better came up.”
“Okay,” I said slowly, pausing to take a slow, shuddering breath. If I lost my cool, we’d get nowhere. Whatever game Peter was playing, I needed to play it, too. “Can we try again some other time?” I asked sweetly.
“Stop acting like a scorned lover,” he spat. “It isn’t flattering.”
“But—”
Peter raised his hand and made the same odd gesture that the bouncer at the lair had made just before the door disappeared. I watched, mesmerized.
It made me feel happy—no, not happy, content.
Good.
Satisfied.
Ahh.
Someone cleared her throat from across the room, and I turned toward Bethany with a goofy smile planted on my face.
“Angie, a word in my office, please?” Despite the kindness of her words, she did not sound happy. Didn’t look it, either.
“What’s going on with Peter?” she demanded after I’d eased the door shut behind me.
I shrugged. My body still felt light, my mind fuzzy. It took me a little bit to come up with an answer.
Then I remembered.
Peter. I hated that guy.
“He’s annoying, and I wish you hadn’t hired him,” I said with a scowl. All my earlier elation was now gone.
Bethany regarded me suspiciously from behind her desk. “Anything else?”
This was it. Someone was finally willing to listen to my misgivings when it came to Peter Peters. Only I couldn’t exactly remember what they were.
Bethany tapped her fingers on the desk and raised one perfectly groomed eyebrow. “Well?”
“Nothing specific,” I said, wondering why it seemed all my recent memories had fallen clear out of my brain. “I just don’t like him.”
A smile washed across her face, replacing the anxiety that had been there only seconds earlier. “Good,” she said, and then, “Thank you, Angie. That will be all.”
I had no idea what was going on or why the conversation bothered me so much. Why did my head still feel like it was full of cotton?
Maybe I was coming down with some kind of cold.
Or maybe Peter…
No.
No way.
I felt like the answer lay just along the edges of my mind, but no matter how I strained, I couldn’t break through the barrier to retrieve it.
Maybe the inevitable had finally occurred.
After months of talking to my cat, I’d now completely lost my mind once and for all.
Chapter Ten
“How was Peter today?” Octo-Cat asked over lunch. Normally he slept straight through our afternoon meal, but today Nan had prepared a tiny saucer of clam chowder for him, too, so that he could join us at the table.
My day up until that point had been completely unremarkable, which made it all the more unnerving that my cat seemed to expect me to share some wild, juicy gossip. “Fine,” I answered slowly, still not knowing what else he expected me to say. “Why are you asking about Peter?”
Octo-Cat stopped lapping his soup and stared at me aghast. Droplets of cream clung to his fur, but he didn’t seem to notice—or at least not to mind. “What do you mean why? Remember his visit here? Our trip downtown to the lair? Any of that ringing a bell for you?”
“The lair…” That sounded familiar. Didn’t I…? “Oh, right!” I shouted as it all came rushing back.
“What’s the lair?” Nan asked from her spot at the head of the table.
“How could you forget?” Octo-Cat cried as he continued to study me with a worried expression. “It was seriously all you could talk about this weekend!”
I dipped my spoon into my soup and watched the steam rise before me. “Today was weird,” I said at last. Then to Nan, “The lair is what was at the address Peter gave me. Or, at least it was, until it disappeared.”
“And you were talking about it all weekend but didn’t once mention it to me?” She seemed hurt and intrigued in equal measures. It wasn’t easy to upset Nan, which meant I felt extra crummy whenever I managed to do so.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think it was safe, but I can’t exactly remember why,” I tried to explain, but kept coming up short.
“Wow, they really did a number on you,” Octo-Cat said with a low growl. “I didn’t think it was worth investigating, but if they’re working this hard to mess with your memory, maybe it is.”
My memory? Is that why my brain had been so fuzzy today? In a way it made sense, but people couldn’t really just make someone forget—at least not outside the movies. “You think they wiped my memory?” I mumbled as Octo-Cat’s eyes continued to bore into me.
“Uh, yeah!” he cried with an agitated swish of his tail.
“Who’s they?” Nan asked gently.
I looked to Octo-Cat for the answer.
“Magic folk,” he spat in disgust.
“Magic?” I asked with a start. Had we already discussed this? Was I again forgetting something important?
“Magic!” Nan shouted in delight. “Has magic finally come to Blueberry Bay?”
Now we both zeroed in on Nan. “You know about magic?” I squeaked. Had I been the only one in the dark here?
She laughed it off. “No, but I’d like to. It sounds fun.”
“No,” I snapped at her. “Please don’t get involved in this one, Nan. I’m begging you.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and stared me down. “Fun or not, where you go, I go. This time, it just so happens to be fun. Now catch me up.”
Or really, really dangerous, I mentally added as my stomach did an impressive series of somersaults.
Octo-Cat guided me through the events of the past week, both to refresh my stolen memories and so that I could share with Nan. As he recounted each detail, I instantly remembered them in full. How strange that I hadn’t been able to recall anything without his guidance.
“So,” Nan said, rubbing her hands together as she prepared to sum things up. “Peter can talk to animals, too. There’s a magic club downtown that can disappear at will, and someone is using magic to rob the shops downtown blind. Is that everything?”
“What do you mean is that everything?” I asked. Where earlier my brain had felt light and fuzzy, now it felt heavy from the burden of all this information slamming into it at once. “It’s an awful lot all on its own.”
Nan stood abruptly and headed toward the foyer.
“Where are you going?” I sputtered. Dizzy. I needed to lie down, but I also couldn’t let Nan walk into a dangerous situation all on her own.
Luckily, the next thing she said was, “We need to go shopping.”
“What? Why?” I rubbed my temples to try to get the blood flowing to my brain again.
Nan appeared completely unbothered by this strange turn of events— rather, she appeared to be genuinely excited. “I don’t have any good outfits for a stakeout, and I doubt you do, either.”
“A stakeout?”
“Yes, that’s what I said. Now, are you coming or what?”
Nan and I went to Target and bought new outfits, complete with nondescript black skull caps for each of us. She even bought Octo-Cat a tiny black bandana, which I knew for a fact he would despise.
The rest of that evening was spent baking and putting together a custom stakeout kit that included board games, blankets, audiobooks, and other random items meant to help pass the time. I mostly just tried to stay out of the way while Nan prepared for our upcoming adventure.
When night fell, she popped onto her feet, narrowed her gaze, and said, “It’s time.”
Honestly, between Nan’s spy movie obsession and Octo-Cat’s legal drama TV addiction, I was burnt out on this stakeout before it even began. Hopefully it would actually lead to some helpful new information—but I wasn’t holding my breath.